A vaccination is a treatment used to produce immunity against a disease, and its creation is credited to Edward Jenner whose discovery of using cow pox to produce an immunity against the deadly small pox virus that plagued the 20th Century.

Vaccinations have been used ever since, with continuing success in reducing the number of people seriously affected by diseases, for example the polio vaccine is 95% effective in producing defensive antibodies against the disease aiding immunity.

In 1998 a paper was published in The Lancet, written by a team lead by Andrew Wakefield, which caused controversy regarding vaccination for many years. The paper focused on the MMR vaccine, which protects against mumps, measles and rubella which are all highly infectious diseases, and a possible link to autism.

This paper therefore lead to a drop in the number of vaccinations given between 1998, when 92% of the population had been vaccinated, and 2003, where in some areas of London the vaccination level had dropped to around 61%. This was devastating to the progress made in regionally eliminating measles, as this fall caused more cases of the diseases to appear again, leading in some cases to death.

However in 2010, the General Medical Council branded the paper as “dishonest”, as the results were not repeatable by subsequent investigations. Yet the damage had already been done and people were still unsure about the safety of vaccinations.

Vaccinations are imperative to the eradication of diseases, and it has been proven through the elimination of smallpox, which is estimated to have killed 300 million people in the previous century alone. 

The hysteria from Wakefield’s paper, caused many children during the early 2000s to not be vaccinated, and therefore are still unprotected against these infectious diseases. The government therefore allows anyone under the age of 18 to receive ‘catch up’ booster vaccines, for MMR, polio and other diseases.

There is also benefits for others because of herd immunity, which means the more people that are vaccinated the lower the risk of other catching the disease even if they haven’t themselves been vaccinated this is especially beneficial for those who cannot be vaccinated. 

Hannah Laffan Coloma Convent Girls' School